Tuesday, December 7, 2010

For Your Pleasure - Roxy Music (1973)

The 2nd album and follow up to the exhilarating self-titled debut by Roxy Music. For Your Pleasure continued with the band’s art-rock style and amped up the glam. The album made onto the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time along with 3 other Roxy albums. This album was the last to feature synthesizer and sound specialist Brian Eno. Eno left the band to pursue a very successful solo career. He is also an acclaimed producer and has worked with many big names in rock and roll such as David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay to name a few. The album encompasses the pop style of their debut as well as expanding in a more artistic direction utilizing Eno’s sound treatments and tape looping effects. The album’s closing title track ends with Eno looping vocals from Roxy’s first album along with a recording from known actress Judie Dench saying, “Don’t ask why.”

The album has its upbeat and hard hitting tracks such as “Do the Strand” and “Editions of You,” the latter featuring memorable solos from half the band which fuels the song with electricity. A good portion of the album has a much darker and eerie feel to it. Tracks like “Strictly Confidential,” the extensive “The Bogus Man,” and easily most of all “In Every Dream Home A Heartache,” singer Bryan Ferry’s disturbing song about a wealthy man and his blow up doll. The track is all build up to a delightful payoff of musical explosion. Despite the song’s slightly disturbing subject matter, I challenge you not to sing along with the breaking point lyrics, “I blew up your body…..but you blew my mind.” This is actually my personal favorite track on the album, not to mention For Your Pleasure itself being one of my favorite albums, and most of all among the Roxy catalogue. The cover also portrays front man Bryan Ferry’s girlfriend at the time, singer and model Amanda Lear. This became a repeated trend on 3 other Roxy album covers: Stranded, Siren, and Avalon.